In this essay adapted from his forthcoming anthology, What My Father and I Don’t Talk About, Andrew Altschul explores the shades and gradients of a father’s love. He considers his dad’s detachment during his childhood, his fierce devotion to his young son, Joe Biden’s enduring love for Hunter Biden, and Donald Trump’s strange displays of dominance over his sons. In this deeply personal essay he examines how the rules of masculinity and fatherhood have ever so slowly evolved over time—for the better.
For a year or so after my son was born, I found myself feeling angry at my father. Driving home from work, or pushing the baby’s stroller in the park, I would think of my father and feel my jaw tighten with resentment. It didn’t take long for me to figure out where it came from: the overwhelming love and protectiveness I felt toward my infant son, the pain I felt when I had to leave him, was not something I’d ever heard my father describe. It was not something I could imagine him feeling. Why didn’t he feel it? Why didn’t he ever say to my mother, “Let me hold him, I need to hold him”? How could he have left the house every morning and put me out of mind for eight, ten, twelve hours until he returned, breath warm and smoky with Scotch, quickly ruffled my hair or maybe kissed my forehead as I slept before sitting down to eat the dinner my mother had cooked for him? And how might I be different had I felt from my father, every day of my childhood, the visceral and attentive love I am helplessly driven to lavish on my own son? Who might I be?
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